Monday, September 11, 2006

Iranian Standoff-A Rundown

Here is a petty good rundown of all of the events and the things at stake in the Iran going after a nuclear bomb and what led up to it. Like I have been saying for a while that Iran has a fairly formidible military. Although we will have air superiority in the first few hours the land war will be horrendous. Here are some highlights of the Iranian arsenal:

• Upgraded Shahab-3 missile, capable of reaching Israel and U.S. forcesin the region.

• The construction and set-up of sophisticated defenses around itsnuclear facilities.

• In addition, Iranian hardliners have assembled a list of 15,000suicide bomber volunteers. “It is code to America: ‘If you hit us, we will play dirty, usingHizbullah and volunteers to hit the U.S. across the region,’” said a Europeandiplomat, echoing analysts who have warned that Iran could easily destabilizeIraq and close the Strait of Hormuz to oil traffic. “There is an enormous dangerof miscalculation” (Ibid).

Iran has the largest army in the region, with 540,000 active-dutytroops and 350,000 in reserves, plus more than 1,600 battle tanks and 1,500other armored vehicles. A veteran Mid-east military analyst at the Center forStrategic and International Studies in Washington wrote last December, “There isconsiderable evidence that [Iran] is developing both a long-range missile forceand a range of weapons of mass destruction” (Ibid).